With its pink fairy wings and fluffy lion’s mane, this Dryocampa rubicunda moth looks almost like a mythical creature. But it really exists and just likes to be extravagant. This makes it stand out clearly within its family, because its closest relatives – the Anisota moths – dress in inconspicuous coats of browns and ochre.
The Dryocampa moth is a bit like that one relative that seems to exist in every family and likes to wrap themselves in eye-catching leopard-print leggings and a fluffy jacket. But just as this fashion-conscious relative is more genetically similar to you than you would sometimes like, Dryocampa and Anisota moths also share large parts of their DNA. Both evolved from a common ancestor into two independent species “only” 3.8 million years ago, making them an exciting research subject for evolutionary biologists like Yash Sondhi from the University of Florida and his team.
To learn more about the genetic differences between the nocturnal Dryocampa and the diurnal Anisota moths, the researchers analyzed the patterns with which both produce proteins during the day. They found that Dryocampa moths invest more energy in their sense of smell, in line with their nocturnal lifestyle, while Anisota moths rely more on their vision.
Sondhi and his team also discovered peculiarities in the Disconnected gene, or Disco gene for short. It plays an important role in regulating a living being’s day-night rhythm. The researchers therefore suspect that changes in the Disco gene in the ancestors of the moths may have led to some becoming nocturnal and forming their own species over time. The mutations may also have led to the two moth species looking different. “If this is confirmed functionally, this is a really concrete example of the mechanism behind their specification at the molecular level, which is rare,” explains Sondhi.